Category Archives: FET, The Maddening

I think, I think, with my mother’s help and my savings, I will be able to get a mortgage on a very small flat. My mother, however, is smack in the middle of an insanely large (and gloriously insane) project right now and is communicating mostly 48-hourly text messages saying, basically, ‘thinking of you, speak to you when Project Insanity is over’. I don’t want to start flat-hunting until I know exactly what I can afford. I call this ‘being quite sensible’, but my sense of what is sensible has taken such a smacking it has demagnetised and occasionally points to the Faroe Islands.

The Velociraptor is, I suppose you could say, in a cage in the middle of the kitchen. It’s no longer chewing holes in the marriage/floor joists, but every time I have another quick peek at the damage, I find something else shredded, sagging off its hinges, or barely held together with duct tape and white-wash. And the cage is taking up rather a lot of room. And it’s still in my house.

The thing is, at least one of us is stuck here until the end of May, as that’s how long the lease is for. H and I are being very adult, civilized, and polite to each other. And, vitally, there are two bedrooms, and H is now sleeping in the other one. Technically, I could stay here until the lease runs out. It’s not horrible. It’s just miserable.

It is so miserable. I already miss H so much. Well, I miss the person I thought H was. As I was coming out of the station this evening on my way home, I bumped into H going the other way (he had a thing to go to), and my poor stupid Golden Retriever of a heart leapt up with happiness – it’s my favourite human! There he is! My human! – and I actually trotted over to him, smiling and pleased, to say hi. And put my hand on his arm, and had him smile back at me. And walked home leaking tears because he wasn’t my human after all and I was going to have to leave him soon.

I loved him so.

My H, who brought me tea every morning we woke up in the same building. Who gave me Doctor Who DVDs for birthdays and Christmas. Who would empty and wash out washing-up basins for me when I was vomiting uncontrollably every stupid month. Who would run me a bath if I was tired and cranky of an evening. Who would text me at work to let me know if the trains were running late. Who took on most of the housework uncomplainingly when my chronic pain and constant miscarriages turned me into a sofa-dwelling slug for weeks and weeks on end. My H, my kind, sweet, affectionate H.

And all the time, he had this catastrophic secret.

Back in, I think, November? H and I had an ugly fight, in which, eventually, I broke down in tears and asked him why he had said so few nice things to me since the miscarriage/DVT/PE debacle? He always used to be verbally affectionate, saying he loved me or that I looked cute in that dress or some such lovely remark every few days. And this had stopped but completely. (In fact, the first time I brought it up, a few weeks earlier, the next day H stopped in the middle of the pavement, cupped my face in his hand, gazed upon me with a faint smile for some seconds, and said, I quote, ‘these last couple of years have really aged you.’ Holy fuck, H, what the hell?). Anyway, we had a row, and I, having ranted at length at how yes I did mind his never saying he loved me any more, asked him why he’d stopped? And he answered, very irritably, ‘It’s never a good time.’

There, that there, should have been the enormous great screaming claxon of THIS RELATIONSHIP IS APPROACHING THE DEATH ZONE.

But instead we were hunting for a counsellor and planning an FET (an FET, incidentally, I should be right in the middle of right now this minute) and I was starting to feel optimistic that maybe this would be OK (the marriage, that is, not the FET, because I was not utterly lost to the pink clouds of delusion).

Yesterday, I left my dear friends in a state of mild panic, as Cute Ute decided Cerazette be damned, she was Cute Ute The Despoiler, Hear Her Roar. HFF commented on our uncanny bad luck in matters reproductive, and there were reasons… whereapon H confessed that he was a bit freaked out and had been all week.

You see, while I was staying at my Dad’s, I forgot to take my pill one night. I realised as soon as I woke up, and took it straight away, and the next one just before bed as usual, and was then back on track hurrah. When H and I finally got home, we were so pleased to have survived the Parental Oblations with only a few scratches, we fell into our own lovely bed with cries of joy and reacquainted ourselves with the boinginess of the mattress.

I think it was about then Satsuma was twinging, but she twinges at changes of diet, changes of weather, and frankly changes of underpants so I ignored her.

This past week, I have handed a cup of half-drunk tea back to H, asking which tea was it supposed to be, because it tasted weirdly metallic. I have felt sick more days than not. I have had an upset in my lower bowel. I was cheerfully putting this all down to eating stupid things I shouldn’t eat at Dad’s (the wine! There was relentless unavoidable wine! In food! I may as well have eaten the wire-wool pan-scrubber, it’d’ve been gentler on the linings).

Then the bleeding and Christing fucknuts vicious back-ache started, and as you know we all collectively freaked out. Because it would be just like Satsuma and Cute Ute to gang up on me and throw all my carefully thought-out decisions about the FET to the winds in a careless rapture of cruelty, while Bitter McTwisted kicked my head in about being a careless, careless, careless little idiot and this is why we couldn’t have nice things.

In my defence, the Cerazette leaflet suggested the pill had to be more than 12 hours late to be ineffective and this one was 8 hours late. To my horror, various frantically googled websites have suggested it need only be 3 hours late to lose effectiveness. Fuckittyfuckfuck.

So I scrabbled about on the bathroom shelves (Good Lord, the collection of empty moisturiser jars I’ve built up) and found a lone lorn remaining pregnancy test. I peed on it this morning, and it came up resolutely negative. Negatively negative with extra negative, which as you know negates the double negative and sets it back to negative again.

Um. Yes. Putting this one down to ‘hormones, they fuck with you. Even on the pill’ (as suggested by Dr Spouse (see yesterday’s post’s comments)) also Cute Ute’s absolutely vile personality.

Or it could’ve been a chemical pregnancy. Oh, who the fuck cares. Either way, it’s Not A Thing and we’re back to waiting and taking folic acid until the official spotting that signals the beginning of FET, The Maddening, in approximately three to four possibly five weeks’ time. Yes? Yes. Righty ho. Nothing to see here. I’m going to get a large drink, mind.

A few days ago, I started spotting, and I thought absolutely nothing of it, as since I’ve been on Cerazette, every month I spot for a week or so, and it had been a month, more or less, since the last bout of spotting. Since when it escalated, to cramps and red blood on Sunday, the Dire Rear, cramps and a lot more blood on Monday, and today, more Dire Rear, cramps, vicious backache, nausea, dizziness and headaches. Hurrah! I stayed at home, hell, I stayed in bed, and let Bitter McTwisted point out all the ways this wasn’t nearly as bad as my ‘real’ periods and therefore I didn’t deserve a day in bed, while The Positive Thinking Fairy went ‘wheeee! This isn’t as bad as a ‘real’ period! Why are you still in bed?’

So there’s that.

(I had an inkling things were in an ongoing direction of increasing unpleasantness on Tuesday, and made sure I’d got to the end of every single pile in my in-tray. I am such a responsible adult. Which is why all my houseplants are dead).

I was getting used to my schedule of regular spotting. And in fact am now relying on it, because FET, The Maddening, is supposed to kick off when I next start spotting. The regular nature of the spottingness being some kind of indication that my hormone levels are rising and falling in a way that will be appropriate for beginning Extra! Added! Hormones! when I next start spotting. So, naturally, I am convinced this heavier bleeding will mean shenanigans, and ye gods and little fishes only will know when FET, The Maddening, will be commencing to start. Oy vey. Is this a thing? Am I fussbiscuiting?

Today, H and I went back to the Riverside Clinic, to see about setting up a Frozen Embryo Transfer for Frosticle.

I felt very calm about this. And sensible. And calm. Right up until I was sitting in the waiting room. All those hopeful people, with their brave blank faces.

(Oh, God, and the woman with the toddler – obviously, there was nowhere else for toddler to be while mama got one with making his sibling. Obviously. No one is so fucking oblivious as to take a toddler to a fertility clinic unless they have to, right? Right. Still. And nevertheless. I actually read The Times therefore. I dislike The Times. I am a raging leftie and I don’t give a TUPPENNY DAMN about celebrity affairs and cellulite. But I read it, because I’d forgotten a book and I didn’t want to look at the toddler).

And then Dr George called us into his office and we discussed the FET at length, while he flicked repeatedly through all the letters from my various haematologists.

Plan, therefore:

Start taking prenatal vitamins with folic acid again. Also, take 75mg of aspirin a day for entire duration of shenanigans, starting about now.

Even though I am on Cerazette, I am having regular, if extremely light (spotting, basically) bleeds, about once a month or so. Satsuma is definitely refusing to be suppressed. Irrepressible ovary. I’d say bless, but there were all the times I wanted her to ovulate and she sodding well wouldn’t for months. Anyway, as soon as the next bleed starts, stop taking Cerazette, and call the clinic to arrange a scan.

Start taking Synarel. (We have a bottle of Buserelin in the fridge, left over. Is this the same thing? Or not? Are the dosages different? Should I just shut up being clever and get a bottle of Synarel?).

Hang on, when do I stop taking the Synarel? *scrabbles through notes, to no purpose*.

Intralipids.

On day seven of the progesterone, thaw out Frosticle and pop it back in.

HOPE LIKE HELL.

You will note no mention of Metformin. Dr George thinks it’s mostly for improving egg quality, really, and not necessary for a FET, and while I know the views on this in the States are vastly different, I personally am pleased, because Metformin makes me feel really disgruntled, and every single time I have taken it I have put weight ON. Yes, ON. I am pretty sure I am one of the minority of people who finds it screws their metabolism up even more, rather than sort it out.

You will also notice we are doing the same old same old protocol – intralipids and steroids and Fragmin – with the addition of aspirin. We are not doing IVIG. We all considered it, but my NK cells, while elevated, are not sky-high, and back in July 2012 while we were being Thoroughly Poked by Dr Expensive, we found that Intralipids alone massively reduced their activity (no idea why H is burbling about IVIG in that post – we didn’t have any results indicating IVIG testing had been done (everything about Dr Expensive’s testing and briefing regarding the tests was confusing and off-pissing, by the way. Everything. Which is why we quit him)).

There are no good theories as to why 6AA died. The higher dose of low molecular weight heparin mentioned above is for me, not Frosticle, and Dr George doesn’t think I could’ve clotted 6AA to death. Though the aspirin is for us both, given The Professor’s recommendation years ago that I take aspirin when pregnant. The steroids and intralipids are definitely all Frosticle’s, as are the cooter-bullets, because ew. We had those bases covered. So, 6AA may have had the right number of chromosomes, and yet still have had DNA of gibberish and codswallop. Maybe all my embryos do. H and I have both been karyotyped and we are both normal (no translocations, balanced or otherwise), but that doesn’t guarantee one or both of us doesn’t have a spontaneous fuck up in the gamete-making process that doesn’t show as a miscount in the chromosomes. And I am 38. My eggs are crappier than those of a 28-year-old and that is Mother Nature for you, the stone-hearted bitch. And it could’ve been just ‘one of those things’. We know so very, very little about conception and early embryonic development. So very, very, very little.

H and I snuck off for coffee before heading back to work, and to have a little think. I had actually started another round of spotting and light bleeding a couple of days ago, but we both decided we did not want to start the sniff-swallow-stab-poke regime today. We’d rather have the extra month. In which I shall take prenatals again and make sure I exercise regularly. And eat my greens. And have a couple more counselling sessions, and warn my boss about the scan regime, and cry and panic and flail about, because this is insane, Gentle Readers. It is nuts. Nuts. How can we possibly put us through this again? And yet, if we don’t, we both know we will regret it. And I can’t face abandoning Frosticle. The poor wee thing will probably die in my uterus, but it will certainly die in a petri dish otherwise. At least Cute Ute’s nice and warm.

P.S. – Cute Ute, the psychotic bitch, decided to make some unintelligible point or other very definite to me, by a sudden outbreak of seriously heavy bleeding with clots this evening. What? Why? I am taking Cerazette, damn it. At least I’m not in pain, she said cheerfully, practically begging Fate to smack her in the teeth for that one.